


Perfect Shadows in a Sunshine Day

by education



Category: Will (TV 2017)
Genre: Artist/Muse Relationship, Background Edward II of England/Piers Gaveston, Bathing/Washing, Getting to Know Each Other, Intimacy, M/M, References to The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, Roleplay, The Art of Espionage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 06:10:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19079092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/education/pseuds/education
Summary: Kit had found himself in want of a muse.





	Perfect Shadows in a Sunshine Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vae/gifts).



“Right this way then, sir.”

The servant that answered Richard’s call at Marlowe’s door hadn’t bothered to do up the laces of his shirt. The exposed skin at his chest glinted in the candlelight as he led Richard further into the manor. It had felt to Richard then as if he were being led away from anything that might be natural, sunlight or...otherwise. 

Marlowe was thus absconded quite exclusively to this unnatural place, his patronage sourced from which Richard could begin to guess the origins of. The residuals from his plays perhaps, though it had been a long time past since whence he’d produced anything new. A wealthy benefactor, enamored by Marlowe’s beauty and sharp tongue seemed far more the likely. The Queen herself, even, if rumour was to be believed. 

Richard was shown to a door, the servant having knocked twice before he turned to leave, disappearing off into the shadows without opening the door at all. 

“Come,” a voice called. Richard went. 

It was Marlowe sat inside the room, fire raging even though it was the middle of summer. The climate of the room had been sweltering. 

“Ah,” Marlowe said, “Richard.”

Something about the way Marlowe said his name felt inauspicious. “Thou, uh,” Richard stumbled, trying to think. Speaking was always so much easier when someone else had planned out all that it was Richard was meant to say. “Thou sent for me?”

“And thus delivered: here you stand.” Marlowe nodded at him. “I find myself in the market for a muse.”

Richard’s heart began to pound, raced within the close quarters of his chest. “And you thought of me?” he asked. 

“For this,” Marlowe answered, “and with regards to other things.”

Richard could hardly imagine what that might even have begun to mean, so he hadn’t allowed himself to imagine anything at all. “I am flattered then, sir.” 

Marlowe seemed to like the title, the corners of his mouth twitching. “An evening past I thought of how my writings seemed only to breathe once it was _that_ moment. The instance when I am able to serve as witness to it on the stage,” he said all this as he moved about the room. He fixed himself a goblet of wine and had hardly taken the time to sup from it before he spoke again. “And then I thought, why shan’t I go right to it? I have seen you on the stage as of late, Richard Burbage, and you can bring words to life in ways I hadn't ever imagined. Would you work such magic for me?”

“Sir?”

“Blow,” Marlowe explained. “Life into my words, as I said.”

Richard had licked his lips. “I would be willing to try, sir.”

x x x

He went to Marlowe’s in his spare hours, without fail. His family thought him to be secreting off to be with a woman. Richard was never sure if the truth was better or worse than their presumptions.

It had been raining, and Richard had been soaked as he let himself into one of the sets of Marlowe’s rooms, only to find it empty. He went through all of them, water dripping in his wake until finally, he unearthed the man with which he sought. 

“Havest thou been practicing?” 

Marlowe had found home for himself that night inside a wooden tub set up near the fireplace. The cloth he laid inside of it was over-long as the ends of it draped down onto the floor., The water absorbed inside of it transferred itself into large puddles onto the floor. It was the most hedonistic act Richard had ever witnessed the man commit, and Richard had borne witness to the man committing actual crimes against nature’s law as well as Her Majesty the Queen’s. 

Richard swallowed. “I have.”

“Come show me then.” 

Marlowe hadn’t turned the entire time, not even when Richard had first opened the door to the room. Richard walked awkwardly over to a settee and had done his best to lay out his coat, knowing that Marlowe wasn’t one to mind such things. He journeyed closer to the man and pushed the hair from his own eyes, allowing himself a moment to collect himself. 

“My father is deceas’d. Come -”

“Oh is he?” Marlowe said. “How unfortunate.”

Richard had forgotten the rest of what it was he had been meant to say. “What?” he asked. “No, he is very much alive, just - that is the line, Kit.” 

Pushing his hair back from his own face, Marlowe frowned. “Is it? No,” he shook his head, sitting up straighter in his bath. “Give it to us again.”

Mayhap Richard had failed in delivering in such a way that Marlowe had intended. His had been a somber rendition, and Marlowe’s writing seemed to exist solely in the ironical. “My father is deceas’d. Come, Gaveston, and share the kingdom with thy dearest friend.”

Marlowe relaxed back into the water. “Yes, now that I remember. Quite good. A wonder that I managed it in only four days of ruminating!” 

He seemed to see Richard then, truly. “Dear boy,” he said, and Richard wondered if he might actually be excused for the night as the weather would only certainly worsen as the hours waged on. “Free yourself from such pathetic vestments and see to a much more fortunate station.” He nodded down towards the water, still steaming. 

“I could not.” 

“I insist.” 

Richard had learned better than to be the man who refused to indulge Christopher Marlowe. 

He brought his fingers to the fastenings on his belt, making quick work of them so that he could remove first his shirt and then trousers. Richard had to sit on the floor in one of Marlowe’s tepid puddles to free his feet from his shoes, leather swelled from the water on his journey. 

When he stood and walked over to the tub he was naked. The water stung as he stepped into it. A servant must have only just refreshed it before Richard had arrived. He hadn’t understood how Marlowe could stand it. “Does thou wish to be boiled sir?” he asked. “Or worse, for myself to be boiled alongside thee?”

Marlowe only smiled. “We could all do with a good boil.” 

The tub was not so small that it couldn’t house the two of them, yet not so big that their knees could help from touching, the tops of them crested above the line of the water while legs themselves brushed and bumped beneath the surface. 

“Have you ever received so loving and grand an invitation?” Marlowe asked.

Unsure if Marlowe meant the scene of the play or his invitation to share the bath, Richard decided to assume the former. “Well,” he said, “when you summoned me to be your muse, I suppose.” 

It looked to surprise Marlowe. “Well.” 

He shifted in the tub, moving over to the side Richard had settled into, thus settling himself between Richard’s thighs so that he was free to rest his back against Richard’s chest. His hand settled onto Richard’s thigh beneath the water. It seemed to Richard to be an honest and natural place to rest it, close as they were, but one could never be sure with Marlowe. 

“I’ve never had a chaste relationship with a muse before.” It was said as if in answer to a question Richard had only just finished asking. 

Richard laughed. “This is chaste?” 

Marlowe’s nose grazed Richard’s cheek when he turned his head. He hummed. “Well,” he said, “when you put it that way.” 

His lips were already open when their mouths met. Richard opened his too, quickly, so that the kiss was not so awkward. They hadn’t done so before, the kissing, and yet it had felt rather natural. 

“Dost thou feel inspired now?” Richard asked once they’d parted back into two souls again. 

“Not in the slightest.”

Richard hadn’t taken it to heart. “Ah, words that make me surfeit with delight.”

Marlowe smiled. “You’re becoming quite good at that.” He turned away from Richard, chest to back yet again. “I meant it genuinely, however. Or for you to say it genuine, at least.”

“Would I not be better served to play the king?” Richard asked. “Edward.”

“Oh Richard,” Marlowe said with honeyed tone. “Don’t you see it? Gaveston is the king. Or good as, besides. That rather is the point.”

It gave Richard pause. “You’ve only the three lines, to be fair.” 

Marlowe sighed. “Perhaps I should rewrite them.”

They’d already been rewritten a good dozen times and even that count was based on Richard’s already generous estimation. “They’re lovely,” he’d promised. “I am only sad that I do not inspire you to produce more.” 

“You inspire me plenty.” He turned around again, his gaze fixed on Richard’s face. “I’ll bandy with the barons and the earls, and either die or live with Gaveston.”

He didn’t sound like himself to Richard. Yet at the same time he did, in a way. Regal and resolute, if not overdramatic. He was acting, Richard realized. He hadn’t known that Marlowe was ever of a mind to do as much. 

There were no more lines for Richard to say and he had never been good at improvising. Marlowe had seemed to be waiting for Richard to say _something_ and for all of Richard’s faults, he hated to disappoint. “I can no longer be keepest me from mine King.”

Marlowe’s hand settled onto Richard’s breast. “What, Gaveston!” he lamented. “Welcome and kiss not my hand: Embrace me, Gaveston, as I do thee.” 

His words were so genuine in their delivery that Richard found himself much moved. He took Marlowe into his arms and kissed him again, with the passion of a Favourite at long last reunited with his King. Richard imagined himself on stage and could not think of any who would play Edward other than Marlowe. 

A hand stroked itself through Richard’s hair. It had begun to dry at last in the humid heat of the room, his fringe curling towards his forehead as a result of the dampness in the air. “Why shouldst thou kneel?” Marlowe asked. “Know'st thou not who I am? Thy friend, thyself, another Gaveston.” 

Richard knew then what this play was to be with such clarity he had never such comprehended in another of his roles. He realized just as instantly that he would likely never play it on the stage, nor would anyone else hence. 

The epiphany he thus suffered would likely be the furthest he would get on the particular subject. He brought their mouths together and kissed Marlowe for a third time. 

Marlowe fascinated him endlessly, though Richard hardly understood him. It had been why he'd allowed the man to become so familiar, and served as good enough cause for Richard himself as to why he’d thus rejoiced in such kinship. Skinship. 

“Kit,” he asked, “Just what exactly am I your muse for?”

“Why my dearest Richard, for acting, of course.” 

Richard had rather begun to suspect that, if only just then at that moment. 

“Here, I’ll do another one.” He sat up straighter in the tub and Richard could feel the shift and catch of the fabric below them, the uncomfortable scrape of the wood. The water had finally started to chill. Richard missed the heat of Marlowe’s body against his own almost immediately, although he hadn’t been quite sure what to do with such a feeling. 

“I do truly and sincerely acknowledge, profess, testify, and declare in my conscience before God and the world, that our Sovereign Queen Elizabeth, is lawful and rightful Queen of this realm, and of all other in her Majesty’s Dominions and Countries.”

Marlowe stopped to smile, beatific. “How was that? I could go on. It was rather a long monologue I was asked to perform. I wouldn’t have been able to get through it all with a straight face had it not been for your ardent tutelage, my most charming and talented muse.”

Richard felt he was finally seeing, at last. “You’re mad,” he said. It probably should have put him off more than it did. 

The emotion behind Marlowe’s grin thus shifted, metamorphosing into that which was sharper and more real, and it was only thus that Richard came to realize the falseness in it before. 

“You’ve finally noticed.”


End file.
